I Tried
by Skiaria
Summary: Sam was sorry he wasn't the one who'd rescued Dean from Hell even though he'd done everything he possibly could. Rated T only because of some of the imagery. One Shot. Post Lazarus Rising.


Nope, I'm only playing in Kripke's sandbox. Don't own it.

_**I Tried**_

I tried.

I tried to stop it. I read until my eyes blurred. I dug through tomes and books and bogus websites. I learned three new languages just to try to find a way. I found the alchemist and his immortal means, but you wouldn't take that path and…well, I can understand. Who would want to be a skeleton who was still thinking and alive in a few hundred years? I summoned the Crossroads Demon though you told me not to. I wanted to know who held your soul in their clawed hand. If I knew that, maybe I could save you. Maybe I could bargain. She wouldn't say. Even with the muzzle of the Colt pointed at her, she wouldn't say. What demon would protect another, unless the other was so powerful that their vengeance would be feared? The magical electrical fire danced over the Crossroads Demon and shock lit her face when I shot her. Revenge for the bargain she'd brokered and fury for her refusal of aid burned in me. I didn't know whether to smile or cry over her body.

I tried.

I used Ruby. I accepted her help, even if she was a demon. All demons didn't want Yellow Eyes' ways. I found some comfort in that. All demons didn't want me to step up to the plate. I found some fear in that but tried all the same. I let Ruby start to shape what I would become. She told me she could save you and I believed her. It was foolish, but I had to try so I did.

I tried.

The Trickster showed me what it would be like without you. I cried more tears than anyone ever should. I even died a few of those times, as I tried to save you. To watch you die a thousand times, to get you back and in a few hours lose you again nearly broke me. But still I tried. Your soul was my model, the standard against which I measured myself to help teach me to carry on, no matter what might come. No matter what I might become. On the Wednesday after, when I cradled your body in my arms as your warm blood soaked my clothes and I knew that this time the day would not restart, my despair consumed me. After seeing you die again and again on that never ending Tuesday, my tears had long since been lost. On that Wednesday, all those absent tears flooded from me in a torrent of salt and loss. I buried you then and in the months that followed without you at my side I did things I never thought I would—never thought I could-- to try to find the Trickster to bring you back to me. I became my father—I think I understand him now--when I no longer heard your soft breathing at night, your sometimes loud and annoying snores. Your dirty socks weren't in the sink. God, who'd have thought I'd miss that? I still bought pies, not thinking. I never could eat them; they were yours. At the dinner table, I set you a place and shared my meal. You were always with me, and I needed that small reminder of why I bathed in blood, why I tortured demon-dead and exorcised them to hell, wondering as I did if maybe they went to you and gave you what I gave them. Pain. When he brought you back to me, when those months never happened, I couldn't tell you what I'd done, what it'd been like. You wouldn't understand. There aren't words for how the loss of you felt. I didn't want to go through that again. I couldn't go through that again. I had to save you.

I tried.

Even at the end, I stood with you and not-Ruby, desperate to find a way, any way to keep you at my side. You were the last of my family. You were my older brother. You were my hero. You were my everything. Then, me pinned to the wall, and you to the table, not-Ruby revealed her white demon eyes to show Lilith had come calling. She came to collect the soul you bartered to bring me back. I saw the doors shake and the terror in your eyes. I could see that you heard, maybe even saw, the hellhounds that ripped you to shreds. Puppy Chow, she called you. Once I walked down the wrong isle in the grocery store, the dog food isle. I fell to my knees and puked up my lunch until nothing was left in me but dry heaves and tears.

I tried.

Bobby wanted you salted and burned, but I couldn't do that to you. I remembered the wrappings we gave Dad. I remembered you and me and the ripped sheets soaked in salt water. I remembered the sticky feel to them and the salt that seemed to take days to wash free of. The smell of the gasoline as we poured it on his body and set his body on the pyre. We watched Dad burn until there wasn't anything but ash. We suspected then that he'd gone to Hell to save you. That he'd made a deal with the bastard you ultimately kept your promise to, the bastard that took our mom from us and any chance at a normal life. The Yellow-Eyed Bastard, that because of him, I died and your soul became forfeit. I tried not to think of the flames licking around Dad's body, that flames like that might be wrapped around your soul. I couldn't burn you. I tried, but I couldn't give your body the symbolism of what might be happening to your soul. And I still believed I'd find a way to save you. We freed Dad. I would free you. Somehow. So instead of salt and gas and flame, I laid you in a pine box. I found a place out in the middle of no where, a place not so far from a little town, the type we always seemed to end up in. There were some old cars that roamed those streets and I thought you'd approve of that as well. So I dug your grave—how many graves I've dug through the years. I never expected to dig yours. I didn't put you the six feet under, but I did want you deep enough that nothing would dig you up but me. You'd need that body when I got you back.

I tried.

I tried to convince myself that I would get you back. And I believed that. I'd gotten you back from the electrocution and the death sentence of a damaged heart. The preacher said God had work for you. I'd gotten you back after the crash when the doctors said you wouldn't wake up and a reaper hunted you a second time. You said you didn't remember it, but sometimes I wondered if that were true. I'd gotten you back from the Wednesday after the hundreds of Tuesdays when I watched you die so many times, the tears just didn't come anymore. I knew you'd be there the next morning and I'd have you for a few hours at least. We did a lot in those brief hours, in those endless days, that you'll never remember. How many times can I almost lose you and still get you back? I was certain I would succeed again. So I tried. Again and again and again and again.

I tried.

I hunted for more Crossroads, more demons to deal. Sometimes they came. Some taunted me with tales of the torture Lilith put you through. Those bitches I killed. Sometimes they saw who I was and backed away, refusing to deal. My soul—they wouldn't take my tarnished demon-blooded soul in exchange for you. They wouldn't take _anyone's_ soul in exchange for yours. But I won't tell you what I did to try to make those deals. Things that would make you ashamed of me. Things I am ashamed of and try to forget from those first weeks of insanity.

I tried.

I went with the Colt to the Devil's Gate. To the place where we saw Dad fade into light. To the place where a slight smell of sulfur still tainted the air and a bit of red crimson from Azazel still stained the land and nothing would grow where it had fallen. I put the gun into the lock. Nothing happened. I tried spells, I tried bargains with God and with demons but nothing happened. I tried everything to get the gate to open, but it wouldn't. More tears stained that metal door, drops of Winchester left there once again. My hands were bloodied from prying and pounding on that door to Hell. I'd have let all the demons of Hell free if it meant you would climb out of hell beside them. I found the headstone Yellow Eyes threw you against. Your blood had been washed away, but it was there that I left a portable CD player, playing AC/DC full blast on a repeated loop, hoping maybe you could hear it through the Devil's Gate and know that I was there, pounding on the gates of Hell and that I would try until there was nothing of me left anymore. That I would find a way to free you. When I placed my ear against the cold metal of that gate, I swear I heard your voice scream my name. But worst of all, I simply heard you scream. I tried to pretend I didn't believe it was you. I tried to believe it was just the wind, or demons messing with me. But your screams haunted my nightmares from that time forward.

I tried.

Books spoke of conjuring spirits from Hell. Yours never came though I laid the lines and runes and offerings and spent more in a week on spell components than we scammed in a year. Don't ask me how I got the money. You wouldn't like the answer.

I tried.

I hunted for pagan gods that might be willing to bring your spirit back to me in exchange for sanctuary from hunters. In exchange for anything. But they skittered away from me like cockroaches in sunlight. I killed nine of them.

I tried.

I hunted witches whose souls were given up to the dark, but they ran from me. None were even brave enough to lay hex bags or try to kill me. I saw fourteen of them meet their demise. I sent them with messages to tell you I was still trying, that I'd never give up, but I don't know if the messages were delivered. They probably told you I'd forgotten you, but you know I never would, I never could, right?

I tried.

I spent two weeks in a church, fasting and praying and begging God if he couldn't bring you back to me, to at least take your golden, tortured soul into his healing arms and Heaven to be with Mom and Dad. The demons I tortured later told me you still burned. I knew they spoke the truth.

I tried.

I found the Trickster. I know it was the same one because he knew me. I begged him to bring you back, as he'd brought you back before. He grinned, he laughed, he shook his head sadly and told me those months of watching you die, those months without you, they'd never really happened. It had all been a dream he put in my head. Certainly he had power. Bringing you back from Hell was not in his purview or so he said. I'd like to tell you I killed him, too. I tried, but he escaped. Again.

I tried.

She came to me. The Bitch. The white-eyed Bitch. She stayed well out of reach, beyond the threat of Ruby's blade and only came when the Colt was out of reach. She told me of your horrifying days and nights and laughed. She told me of your screams and how the torture was burning away your humanity. She told me how demons were made and she told me she'd see to it you'd become one. You'd serve her, you'd kneel before her gladly. You'd do her bidding to destroy innocent after innocent. She told me if I put a gun to my head and killed myself, she'd free you. But I knew she was lying. I couldn't save you if I was dead. I offered my soul if she would bring you back. She agreed but wouldn't come close enough to seal the deal. Then there you were, standing in front of me. She demanded I meet the terms of our deal, to put the gun to my head. You stood there and the fear of losing me, the pain for the deal I'd made, wasn't in those green eyes. I tossed you the silver knife but you wouldn't cut yourself to prove to me who you were and the shapeshifter died, a silver bullet in his chest. I had to look at your dead form. Again. I cursed that I couldn't use my psychic talents against the Bitch as she laughed with glee at my anguish. Next time she said. But until then, she'd visit you and give you some special attention. She would see how much of your humanity she could rip away with a bit of determined and very special torture she had planned for you. I tried to kill her, I tried, but she was gone in a column of black smoke before I could act. I'm sorry. More shifters and revenants came to me disguised as you to say you'd returned to me, that you'd escaped. I cut each of them down in turn. I didn't cry over your doppelganger body anymore. My soul had grown too hardened and cold.

I tried.

You didn't want me to walk the psychic road. I tried not to. But the Bitch visited me again, twice more to taunt me, to whisper in my ear tales of your screaming, of your begging, of your agony. I knew you would be furious. I knew you didn't want me to embrace my demon heritage, but I had to finish Lilith, I had to get you free. I wanted her head on a platter, blood pooled around that childish face. I turned to Ruby. I was alone and yes, I took comfort in her arms more than once, because she was the only one I could talk to, I could shout at, I could hit, and even "kill", and she would still be there and know and understand why I was doing what I was doing. Why I was the way I was. The little brother who so wanted to be like his hero that he learned to drink, learned to pick up women, learned to kill any evil son of a bitch that crossed his path or that he went hunting for. Sometimes I hunted things that should have been a ten man job, and still I walked away alive. I tried, but it seemed even the reapers wouldn't take my soul.

I tried.

I tried not to embrace what Ruby offered. I was so lost without you. I took that dark road anyhow. If I'd taken that road before Lilith had come, maybe I could have saved you from her. Yeah, I used the demon blood in me, but I'd take any road to Heaven or Hell, if it would save you or bring you back to me. Lilith stayed away after I embraced my psychic talents and I wondered how long it would be before some demon I hunted revealed himself to be you, my brother who was a soul with nothing left but evil and pain and who served my enemy. I'd have to send you back to Hell…No. I'd destroy you before returning you there. Even to know your soul was gone forever, that it would not greet me in the afterlife, I was willing to make that sacrifice to save you from an eternity of pain. My pain didn't matter. I didn't feel it anymore. I didn't feel anything anymore.

I tried.

I tried not to turn my back on life. You never did. I tried to be like you, but it was so hard. So very hard.

I tried not to lose hope.

I tried to hang on to you.

I tried to save you.

I tried to bring you back.

I even tried to forget you.

I failed.


End file.
